The invention relates to an apparatus for coating food products with sauce while simultaneously deep freezing them, with a rotatable drum in a horizontal position, on the inner wall surface of which a driving plate is disposed and which has an opening at an end face.
Previously, it has not been possible satisfactorily to combine different, cooked food products, such as noodles, rice, vegetables, potatoes or meat in the deep frozen state, firmly with a sauce, particularly when the proportion of sauce was to be higher than 4%. However, this would be desirable, since it would offer the possibility of dividing the contents of a package of the product into individual portions, which would always have same consistency and composition. It would then be possible to dispense with mixing all the contents of a package before consumption. In practice, it is therefore customary for the manufacturer either to offer the whole product as a frozen block or to add some larger, frozen pieces of the sauce portion in block form to the package.
Admittedly, attempts have been made to freeze food products in horizontally positioned, relatively long drums with the help of liquid nitrogen or liquid carbon dioxide and, at the same time, to provide them with a sauce coating. Up to now, however, results have been unsatisfactory. It was possible to achieve uniform adhesion of the sauce only to a limited extent. The problems, which arose, obviously were based essentially on the fact that it was not possible to cool the goods quickly enough. For the previously used, relatively long drums with only one filling and discharging opening at an end face, there was an ejector, for ejecting the goods after the cooling process, at the driving plate in the region of the opening. This resulted in relatively confined space relationships, which counteracted particularly the rapid introduction of the coolant. However, if the cooling does not take place quickly enough, not only is the adhesion of the sauce to the products limited, but there may also be agglomeration and adhesion or even breakage of the goods, such as cooked rice or noodles.